Why Apple Is The World’s Most Innovative Company BY ROBERT SAFIAN
T
he only things more impressive than Apple’s financial numbers are the products that generated them. For a company routinely slagged for not having had a hit since 2010’s iPad, Apple, which as of mid-January was valued at more than $900 billion, had a heckuva 2017: Its wireless AirPods became ubiquitous from Brooklyn to Boise, and can now be paired with the best-selling Apple Watch Series 3, which has GPS and cellular connectivity, for a meaningful, new consumer experience. Developers embraced ARKit, Apple’s augmented-reality framework, like nothing since 2008’s App Store (which paid out $26.5 billion last year). After a year of whining about what the new iPhone might offer, most skeptics were blown away by the iPhone X, with its facial recognition, camera quality, bezel-to-bezel screen, and new user interface. Now, HomePod, first announced last June, offers a fresh take on the intelligent speaker. These category-redefining products don’t just defy the adage that scale hampers agility and creativity–they obliterate it. During a January 10, 2018, conversation at the newly opened Apple Park (itself an impressive product launch), Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down with Fast Company to discuss the overarching philosophy behind Apple’s ever-evolving universe and what unites its ambitions and endeavors.
Fast Company: What makes a good year
for Apple? Is it the new hit products? The stock price? Tim Cook: Stock price is a result, not an achievement by itself. For me, it’s about products and people. Did we make the best product, and did we enrich people’s lives? If you’re doing both of those things–and obviously those things are incredibly connected because one leads to the other—then you have a good year.
FC: Do you look back at some years and say,
14 FASTCOMPANY.COM APRIL 2018
Oh, that was a good year, that year wasn’t as good? TC: I’ve only had good years. No, seriously. Even when we were idling from a revenue
point of view–it was like $6 billion every year– those were some incredibly good years because you could begin to feel the pipeline getting better, and you could see it internally. Externally, people couldn’t see that. With the iPod, before it came out, we didn’t really know that it would become as big. But it was clear it was changing things in an incredibly good way. Of course, with the iPhone it was clear that that was a huge change, a category definer, but who would’ve thought [it would have impact] to the degree that it [did].
FC: We forget that the iPhone wasn’t imme-
diately embraced by everyone. TC: [People said] it could never work because it didn’t have a physical keyboard. With each of our products there’s that kind of story. Over the long haul, you just have to have faith that the strategy itself leads to [financial results] and not get distracted and focus on them. Because focusing on them doesn’t really do anything. It probably makes the results worse because you take your eye off what really matters.
FC: So what does matter? TC: It’s always products and people. The
question at the end of every year, or every month or every week or every day, is, “Did we make progress on that front?”
FC: Given the relentless pace of change in
the world, how do you prioritize what Apple is going to spend its time on, which things deserve attention and which things are distractions? TC: There is more noise in the world than change. One of my roles is to try to block the noise from the people who are really doing the work. That’s tougher and tougher in this environment. The priorities are about saying no to a bunch of great ideas. We can do more things than we used to do because we’re a bit bigger. But in the scheme of things versus our revenue, we’re doing very few things. I mean, you could put every product we’re making on this table, to put it in perspective. I doubt anybody that is
